Friday Night Pizza Night

Fridays are a little crazy for me. Fridays are my grocery day, my day to leave the house clean for the weekend... And the day I take The Accountant, aka my husband, to work so I can have the car. Some days I manage to squeeze a shower in before running him to work and doing the grocery shopping. Some days I'm just hoping in the shower at noon.
On a day as busy as Fridays are, I need a quick and easy meal. We really try to stick to eating out only once a week. That means no fast food on Friday. And we really aren't into the frozen food thing. Once in a blue moon, in lieu of eating out we'll pick up something frozen ahead of time so we can stay in all day and not really cook... But if I'm going to eat that badly, I'd rather just eat fast food.
Typically, we don't have a lot of leftovers, either. I try to cook an exact amount daily, or just enough that The Accountant can take it to work with him for lunch.  So Fridays are a great day for home made pizza.
At this point you're probably thinking that I'm going to say I use tortillas, or pop-n-fresh crescent rolls or something. No thanks. I wouldn't spoil a perfectly good pizza like that. No siree Bob. It's amazing, but in reality home made pizza takes maybe 15 minutes of work. Here's how I do it.
In the afternoon I find myself 10-15 minutes to throw together bread dough. I like to use a regular white bread dough recipe. I find it makes an amazing crust. I know it sounds like a lot of work already, but honestly, if you've ever made bread dough you know that it takes maybe 5 minutes to get the ingredients together, and another 8 minutes to kneed the dough. From there, it just has to rise. My work is done. Almost. Once the dough is ready, I throw the sauce on the stove to simmer.
I like my sauce to cook as long as it can. It's a really simple sauce, just a can or two of tomato sauce, garlic, onion, oregano... Then you can put in whatever else you like. Diced tomatoes, green peppers, pepperoni, mushrooms. All of these will make your sauce richer and more flavorful. Even if you put them all in it, it takes maybe 5 minutes to throw together. From there, add some water, and leave it on low to impregnate the flavors into the sauce. It's so easy I do it while Sirenita is eating lunch. And then I neglect it all till right before I leave to pick up The Accountant. Before it's time to go, I shut off the sauce, plop the dough onto a cookie sheet, spread it out to cover the sheet, and throw it in the cold oven for a second rise. When we get home, the dough is ready to cook, it takes maybe 20 minutes. Once it's ready, spoon the sauce on, put some cheese and more toppings on, back in the oven for 5 minutes, and you're good to go!
It seems really complicated, maybe... But honestly, if you want a hearty home cooked meal with minimal effort, pizza is totally the way to go. There is nothing else that requires so little of my attention and tastes so good as Pizza does... So if you have time in the morning, or a few hours before you want to eat, and don't want to spend a lot of time cooking at meal time, wow them with your pizza, and enjoy the leftovers! You can even make the dough up ahead of time, pop it into the freezer right after you kneed it (don't let it rise) and leave it there till the day you want pizza. Pull it out in the morning, throw it in a bowl and let it thaw. As it thaws, it will rise, and voila! Home made pizza dough!

The isolation of the modern SAHM

Sirenita and I took a walk this morning before the temperature skyrocketed from "uncomfortably sticky" to "heat warning." I was, of course, wearing my work out gear - aka stuff that makes me look like an active person instead of someone who showers during AM Naptime. Our 8 year old toy poodle trotted (or panted, more like) along at my heels.

As we walked, I explained where we were going, and the things around us, like a good parent developing their child's communication skills is supposed to. I was feeling pretty good about our walk. And then they showed up. The local clique of stay at home moms.

Three fit women in their "I haven't showered yet" work out gear, marching right at me with their kids in strollers taking up the entire road. There was no way they couldn't have seen me. I smiled, nodded a normal gringo greeting... And they swept on like I didn't exist, laughing and talking behind their strollers. And leaving me feeling incredibly isolated, like the little girl ignored by the other kids at recess.

The Accountant and I only have one car. As much as I would love to have one, we honestly we don't need a second one. It would just sit in the garage most of the week anyhow.  But because we have only one car, and all the local mom groups seem to be an hour away on the far side of the city, I am not really connected with any other SAHM. 

Being a stay at home mom is hard work. I spend my whole day wrapped up in the whims of a tiny person who communicates through "ITA, ITA, ITA!" (Sirenita speaks Spanish only right now, Ita is "Lista" or ready) at best, and leaves me wondering what in the world she is telling me she is ready for?  That's not the really difficult part of it, though. As a stay at home mom, your identity suddenly takes a drastic shift. Once, you were a social person talking about interesting things with your friends. Now you tell yourself to refrain from sending them video of your genius 11 month old making farm animal sounds, because they're surely sick of hearing about your child. You become keenly aware that you've become that mom. The one that talks about kids all day, and little else. You feel socially awkward, and even if you do manage to have a conversation that doesn't revolve around your child, you have to interrupt it every 30 seconds to pull your child out of flower pots, remove dvd's from their mouth, drag them out from under the couch, and run down the hall because God alone knows what she'll get into by herself down there. 

It's a hard life, trying to keep a decent identity, or just not care what your friends think. If you're lucky, you aren't the first to have a kid and the transition is smoother. Or someone else gets pregnant and you find yourself looking with joyful anticipation to the moment they understand your sudden insanity, and why bath time and animal noises are so wonderful

But I'm sure there are plenty more of us out there, pushing on through the ups and downs of the mom life, feeling lonely, awkward, stinky, and ignored. It's a sad world where we live so close to so many people that we'll never know.

Several blocks later, we passed another Mom. She too, was in her haven't had a chance to shower yet work out gear, as she pulled her little one along in a wagon. She smiled, commented on my well behaved dog. Exchanged a moment of humanity. Ladies, this mom business is far too lonely to be cliquish and rude. Have a heart, and at least smile at others as you go by. I know I will be, because they may just need an extra cup of coffee and a smile today. 

Human Waste and Crisis Management?

Yesterday, Monday, was my regular cleaning day. There's nothing like getting the house back in order after the weekend. Sweeping, mopping, cleaning the kitchen, the guest bath, vacuum, the laundry... I always save the master bath for last. It's easy for me to do while my Sirenita is up. Our master bath has a big doorway that opens, obviously, into the master bedroom. The Master has been baby proofed to bareness since Sirenita was 3 months old and started rolling everywhere to get around. It's easy for me to put a baby gate between the bathroom and let her play while I clean, and then shower.
Our day started out like any other Monday. As I stepped out of the shower, I prided myself on the speed of my cleaning, and thought that there would be enough time before nap time to sit down and play with Sirenita. Maybe go through the enormous book of animals she loves so much.
I looked up at her as I grabbed my towel. So sweet, sitting on the floor, playing with.... Wait. What in the world is she playing with?
I squinted at my daughter. She was sitting on the floor, not far from the bathroom door with something about the size and shape of a blueberry in her hand.
"What??!!! What is that, and where did she get it?! I just vacuumed, she can't have found it on the floor, whatever it is! It looks like a choking hazard!"
All my mom alarms were going off. How could I have missed this dangerous object? I stepped to the gate.
Time froze as I realized what Sirenita had in her hands. The strobe lights going off in my mommy paranoid brain stopped exactly where they were. There was no sound, no time. My first reaction (a bad one, I must say) was to yell, "Nooooo!!!!!" As if she were the dog, and that would help. I'm thankful it didn't start her into scrambling away. Instead, she continued to play with it.
I stepped over the gate. My second reaction was a much better, more reasonable one. "Sirenita, sweetie... Look at me."
She dropped the ball of feces she had been playing with on the floor, and looked up at me.
"Oh thank God..." She hadn't been eating it. Her face was clean.  There was, however, blueberry tinged poop smeared across her belly, her hands, her feet, and rolling out of her open diaper onto the floor.
"Ok.... What do I do now?" I thought fast, then closed the diaper back on her, and whisked her away to the bathtub.  Where does one even start when their child discovers his or her own poop for the first time? I felt so...unprepared. I didn't know whether to clean the child, or the floor.. Or how to clean the child.
I opted to leave my little Poopykins in the empty tub while I removed the escaped convicts from the carpet, not considering the immediate draw and imminent contamination of my shampoo bottles. Next, I came back, realized I was going to have to clean the bathtub again, pulled Poopykins out of the tub, and removed the diaper and remaining offense from her backside on a towel. (We don't have a changer.. but who would want their little feces dipped baby on the changer anyhow?) Then back in the tub for a nice bath, into a diaper, and out into the bedroom to play some more while I cleaned the tub and all my  bottles.
Later on, over extra coffee I contemplated the events. Two things stuck out in my mind. One, if I had her in cloth this wouldn't have happened. In fact, she will never be left unclothed or "unattended" in a two piece outfit and a disposable diaper again. Viva la Sleep Sack. She'll be wearing them to bed until she is potty trained!
Two, They say all babies do this. I've heard horror stories of children who painted their entire rooms, or ate their own. I experienced first hand the time my niece opened her diaper to scratch her little bum during a nap, then twirled poo in her hair and went back to sleep. The hospitals offer birthing classes, hoo heee, hoo, hee... and breast feeding classes... and daddy classes, and sibling classes, and basic baby care classes... But why is their not a "Human Waste and Crisis Management" class?

Mom Stuff: Removing the irremovable - Banana stains.

A while back Sirenita got banana on one of my favorite onsies. I didn't think much of it. I was too busy including said onsie in my mental plan for vacation packing. It's cute, it's great quality, I got it for $2 bucks... Whats not to love about this onsie?
As the day wore on, this Adorable White Onsie grew a brown spot smack dab in the middle. No big deal, it'll wash out, right? Two washes later I realized that I had a stain. I tried my go-to stain remover. No go. This booger was one tough stain.
Who knew that Bananas stain? Obviously they're nature's first baby food, thus they should be stain free, too, right? Hahaha..... All the mommy's laugh at this one. Especially since they're trying to remove a stain from a particular outfit they love.
I went to the internet. I saw 500 posts about banana stains. 499 of them said "The only way to get banana stains out of your kid's clothes is not to get them in the first place!" Great. Not helpful. There was 1 that involved some weird chemical I've never heard of and ironing. Also not helpful. So I decided to try again. This time I tweaked my recipe. Dawn and peroxide. I lathered on the dawn, then I soaked it really well with peroxide, and let it sit for a day before I washed it.
Success! Dawn is magic! Banana stains can be conquered!

Sirenita's First Easter Outfit part 1: The dress

A month or so ago I had the revelation that Sirenita should have something a little more special than a knit carter's dress for Easter. I don't have anything against Carters, but... I remember one year having an Easter dress that I particularly loved... I got to pick the fabric (I don't think that happened to often) and the pattern. I remember going to church in that dress, my new sparkling white patten leather dress shoes (the ones all little girls wore at that time) and to top it off, I had a new purse, lace gloves, and a hat. It was actually warm in Ohio that year. It still sticks out to me. There aren't many times when a little girl really gets to dress up and go out in this world we live in. So when those opportunities come along, we've got to seize them and make the most of them, right? That is why Sirenita deserves more than a generic knit dress. So I set about the process of "going all out" for Sirenita's first Easter. I'm almost done, I just need a bow to match. And to sew her Easter basket together.

The fabric was easy to find. The pattern not so much.I  had seen a keyhole dress with a heart shaped hole in the back years ago, and I thought it would be adorable. It's always warm here at Easter, so a keyhole sundress would be nice.
Not being exactly confident that my sewing skills were up to the task ahead of me, I decided to hunt out a tutorial and try a sample dress before I risked ruining the fabric I bought for her dress.  I found an absolutely wonderful Keyhole dress

 tutorial. I had never made a lined bodice before, so I had to learn that too. This same blogger has an awesome lined bodice tutorial, as well. Now I knew that I had the skill to make the dress, but I still couldn't get the size quite right. As awesome as her tutorials are, there isn't a pattern and the ones I made just didn't cut it.  
Finally I found "The Party Dress" from The Cottage Mama. I think it is probably the ultimate in little girl's classic dresses. It's so easy, and so cute. It took me a few hours to put my "test" dress together. It's a little big for Sirenita, but come summer it'll be perfect.

The Cottage Mama's tutorial and pattern are free (If you join her facebook page or her newsletter) and so easy to use. I was able to adapt them easily to create my keyhole dress. Since Sirenita is almost crawling, I opted to leave off the contrast stripe down at the bottom. It worked out better because I really, really wanted to use this ribbon I picked up as the sash. Instead of cutting four pieces for the back part of the bodice, I just cut two and I cut them on the fold like the front. I also only cut two pieces for the skirt, one front and one back. I didn't need the extra slit in the skirt since I have a big open heart on the back. I put in my keyhole when I sewed the neckline, and did everything else just like the Party dress tutorial said. I think it came out wonderfully, and I can't wait for Sirenita to wear it on Easter!

This is just the first part of her outfit, because I believe in going all out if you're going to dress a little girl up... As I just discovered. Stay tuned, posts on the rest of the outfit coming soon!

No sew headband

This one is super easy, and very cute. Sirenita wears these and gets compliments on them often. Best of all, they're made of stretchy knit material, and can be adjusted to her head size as she grows! Ready to start?

 Find yourself a strip of knit fabric. This is made from a leftover cami that got turned into a skirt for Sirenita; I just cut the seam off. Make sure that your piece of fabric is big enough to go around the intended wearer's head twice with a little extra leftover.

Pull on the strip of fabric and stretch it could. It will roll up, and hide most of the raw edges. Knit doesn't ravel, so raw edges are no big deal here. 

Once you have stretched the fabric well, cut it right in the middle, so that you have two stretched strips of equal length. 

Lay one strip down in the shape of a "U." Lay the other one over the middle, so it looks like a fork or trident. 

Take the center piece of your "fork, and pull it back, passing it underneath other strip. Now it should be "linked" like a chain. 

Take the two ends of your first "U" and twist them around each other. 

Now do the same on the other side. You can twist alot, or a little, whichever you like, just make sure both sides match. 

Now take the twisted ends of one side, and lay them over the opposite side. 

Tie a knot, and you're ready to go! This can be untied, and adjusted if need be. You can also stretch it out to make it fit better if you need it. 

My Experience with sleep training Part 3: We survived the four month sleep regression

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for… Part two of my experience with sleep training. When we last left off, I was able to get Sirenita to go back to sleep or not wake up all the way at night. That was a miracle that left me no longer sleep deprived, and a more or less happy mamma. Now there were two remaining obstacles that stood between me and a happy routine every day. First of all, it still took us two hours or more every night to get
 Sirenita to fall asleep. Walk, rock, lower, crap. Start over. Walk, rock, wander the house, pat her back, sing her songs… Once she fell asleep, she was out for the night (with the exception of her mostly asleep midnight snacks.) I had what I considered a “good routine” for the morning at the time – she would eat at about 8am, but otherwise sleep straight through till 10am. This enabled me to get stuff done.

 At about 8 weeks, Sirenita decided she no longer wanted to nap. She would only sleep in my arms during the day. She wouldn’t last more than 20 minutes asleep anywhere but in my arms. I could tell she was tired. She just couldn’t stay asleep, for some reason. I was frustrated, to say the least. Every 4th day or so she would sleep the entire day and wake up only to eat. Go figure. I researched, I talked to friends, family, her pediatrician (who gave me the depressing advice “Some babies just catnap like that”) and finally made some changes. Within 3 days we were able to get her to sleep within half an hour of our starting time. Within a week, we were on a working nap time schedule, with a bedtime and all. So… What did I do?

 1)Baby KISS Principle
 Remember this from my previous post? Keep it sleepy, stupid. I had been told that babies need to see the sun! Open the curtains, get their circadian rhythm in order, blah, blah, blah. Somewhere around 2 months, babies start to become increasingly aware of their surroundings. They notice the way the light dances through the leaves and casts shadows on the wall. They notice the contrast of the ceiling fan against the ceiling, the black and white stripes made by the grate over the heat vents. With so many amazing things to look at, they don’t really want to sleep, they want to take it all in. After all, there is so much more to look at than there was in the womb!

 If I were to tell you that you can take a nap at 2:30 on a week day, you’d be thrilled, right? And when I lead you to a fully lit room (to lay on a hard cot with no blankets or pillow, by the way) you may or may not be able to sleep. Now that baby is aware their surroundings, they may or may not be able to sleep either. They don’t know how to go to sleep like an adult does, so when the first sleep cycle ends at 20 minutes  or so (babies have shorter sleep cycles than adults) baby wakes up and doesn’t feel like going back to sleep, even though she needs it.  The solution is to close the blinds, close the curtains. Make it dim. It doesn’t need to be pitch black, it just needs to have a nice sleepy gloom to it.

 2) Observation 
After Christmas, I started tracking everything. Nap times, diaper changes, feedings. I realized that when I was trying to put Sirenita down for a nap she wasn’t actually sleepy half the time. This led to an angry, frustrated baby who rebelled by refusing to sleep during the day if she could at all help it. (If babies can go on nursing strikes, which Sirenita has done several times, why not nap strikes?)

I had read that when she starts to yawn, put her down for a nap. It worked wonders for a few weeks. Then boom! At two months, I found myself with an angry, awake yawning baby. As I observed Sirenita I found that she began to rub her eyes about half an hour after yawning, and then within 10 minutes of that got cranky. The eye-rubbing stage was still too early to put her down, but crankiness was my sign that it was time. When I observed her awake time from first 'get me up' cry to crankiness, I realized she could only stay awake and be happy for two hours at a time. After two hours, she morphed into an angry screamer.

 A word of caution about observation. My first error was in thinking that because for a few weeks Sirenita was sleepy at the yawning stage, that she would continue to be sleepy at that state. You have to learn your child, but be aware that they will change. Their nap time needs will change. Since I realized this, Sirenita’s naps have shortened by half an hour, but the transition was fluid and didn’t cause doom in our home. You have to keep observing, and realize that there will be changes in how long your child stays awake, and the signs that they’re getting sleepy. Don't assume that because there are exactly two hours of good wakeful time now that there will always be - or even that there will be later in the day.

 3) Bed is for sleeping
 A friend of mine mentioned to me that she only puts her child in bed to sleep. I hadn’t been leaving Sirenita in her bed for play time, but I did between diaper changes, or to run to the bathroom, grab something from the other room, etc. Sirenita's idea of bed was not “the place I sleep.” It was “the place mommy suddenly dumps me for five minutes when we had been having such a good time playing together.”

 I was given a ton of blankets and quilts for Sirenita. I thought I had more than I’d ever need. They are now my best friend. I keep one in each part of the house, ready to unfold and put on the floor. Sirenita plays on them when she is awake. She spends more time rolling around on a blanket on the floor than anywhere else. I put her somewhere where I can keep an eye on her, and make sure that there is nothing close enough for her to grab or knock over. Once I started leaving her on the floor, her hatred for her bed waned. Sometimes as we get closer to nap time, she will actually grab a favorite toy, cuddle it by her face and go to sleep on the floor. She no longer feels the need to rebel against sleep.

 3)Nap/sleep routine
 Ok… I hated hearing this from the people I asked. I thought I had tried a nap time routine, and it didn't work. I figured I'd have to wait a little and then let her cry it out.  Here’s the deal. When it comes to nap time routines, the grown up version of the “KISS” principle has to meet the baby version. Keep it simple, keep it sleepy.

I had tried several times to implement a nap time routine. I failed each time. It didn’t work. Why? Because I made it way too complicated and set myself up for failure. I had read the recommendations, a song, a snuggle, a book…. And I tried to do it all. Once I realize that I made my routine impossible, I changed it around. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do read to Sirenita every day. We usually do it while we roll around on the floor, though. I don’t need her to learn reading is sleepy, I want her to think it’s exciting. So every day I lay on my back on the floor beside her, or sit in a chair with her on my lap and read a book to her. But it’s not part of our bedtime routine because when she is tired it is pointless to read to her! 

Our bedtime routine consists of things we need to do. When I get her ready for a nap, the first thing I do is turn on the white noise. We only use this noise while she is asleep, so that signals that its time to relax. If it’s a particularly sunny day I’ll also half shut the blinds at this point. Then I feed her. A lot of times she falls asleep while she is eating because she is already tired and knows what is coming. If she doesn’t go to sleep, that’s ok too. Once she’s done, I put a sleep sack on her. (I used to swaddle her, but she is too active now.) I take her to the windows, and as I close the curtains I tell her it’s time for a nap. Then I sing a short song (Bella Notte from Lady and the Tramp is my favorite), I give her a kiss, tell her I love her, and put her in bed. Sometimes she looks at me, turns her head, and goes to sleep immediately. Sometimes she’ll cry a little. I quietly walk out and leave her there if she does. I tell myself to give her a chance to go to sleep, and if she starts screaming I’ll go get her and we’ll try later. We’ve never gotten to that point, because after a minute or two of crying she settles herself down and goes to sleep. It’s rare for her to cry, but it does happen. For the most part, this is a no-tears method.

At night we do the same thing. Her bedtime routine is initiated by a bath at the same time every night. Once she is in her PJs, we turn on the white noise and follow the same routine. Within about 3 days Sirenita was used to her routine, and it became successively easier to get her to sleep. I will warn you that cuddling changes once you have a bedtime routine. Sometimes I just want to cuddle my sleeping baby. Usually my sleepy baby is waiting for me to put her into bed so she can go to sleep. In the beginning, I tried cuddling her to sleep a few times, and she cried till I put her in bed. *Sigh* So independent at 4 months! As we get closer to 5 months, however, she is developing her own personality and cuddles in her own way when she wants to. I'll spare you a detailed description of her adorable cuddlyness, and just assure you that there are still cuddles to come.

 4) Set a schedule 
 Once you’ve observed your child enough to know how long they stay awake, and hopefully how long they typically sleep, set a schedule. We’ve all been told “Don’t wake a sleeping baby.” I think that was one of my biggest errors. I was letting Sirenita sleep till 10am, then sleep all day if she wanted. Once I knew how long she needed to be awake, I was able to get her to sleep when she was ready. That made it easy to figure out how long she needed to sleep, since she would typically sleep the same amount of time. From there, it was a matter of figuring out when to get her up in the morning. As much as I enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning, I realized that there was no good schedule that allowed Sirenita to sleep till 10. Instead, I wake her up at 8 every morning. That sets the stage for our whole day. Just like adults get “programmed” to wake or get tired at the same time daily, babies will too. The key to keeping the schedule isn’t so much as knowing when nap time begins as knowing when it needs to end. I typically Sirenita gets up at 8am, sleeps 10:30-1pm, 3-5 and goes to bed at 7:30 – but the key is not to let her oversleep. It’s ok if it happens occasionally, but I try to follow the wake up schedule as much as possible to keep her on it. On of the best things that happens with a schedule is that she usually doesn't cry when going to bed or waking up. She may lay there and squeal for a while, but she doesn't often cry.

After just a few weeks, Sirenita was so used to her schedule that even if we were out she would (and still does) fall asleep at nap time, and all because I woke her up at strategic times. I kind of worked backwards here, but it works. With a good nap schedule, even if baby doesn’t get to bed “on time,” or misses all their naps and goes to bed late a day or two a week, it won’t “mess them up.” More likely, if you’re consistent baby will take it upon themselves to nap at the appropriate times regardless of location.

 These are kind of a freebies, but I have found that Sirenita is happier if I wake her up right. Typically I hear her start squealing within five minutes of the end of nap time. If she doesn’t, and she is still asleep I have found that if I go wake her by standing beside her bed, calling her name, touching her, etc, she wakes up making the saddest face ever and cries the first few minutes. I have a “wake up” routine too, because it helps her wake up on her own instead of cruel mommy waking her up.

I walk in, open the curtains so the light comes in, or if it’s particularly gloomy, I turn the light on, and I shut off the white noise. That’s it. Usually that’s enough to make her start stretching and waking up on her own. If not, I’ll rattle around the room for a few minutes. Open and shut drawers, walk around and do my own little things (Quietly! No need to scare them awake!), and just the additional sounds help wake her up. Once she has stretched, and rolled around and opened her eyes on her own, I go to her bed and start talking to her. I usually get a smile at that point and she is ready to get up.

 Last comments on schedule… If Sirenita wakes during her nap, I try to leave her down even if she cries. I find that she typically wakes up about half way through, cries for a minute or two, and then settles back to sleep even better. If I get her up at that halfway point, I’m cheating her out of the best part of the nap. It’s hard sometimes, but I listen for the intensity of the cry. I think we probably all learn our baby’s cries. Sirenita has a cry, and then a scream. If she is crying, I leave her down. She’ll go back to sleep within a few minutes. If it escalates to a scream, the nap is definitely over. She usually doesn’t cry or scream at the end of her nap at all. I think she realizes that usually mommy comes in just as she is waking up.

 5) Consistency
Above all… Consistency is key. More for you than for baby. Make your routine something you do anyway, and do it in the same order. Keep an eye on the clock. It’s hard to bring yourself to wake a sleeping baby, but they will be happier if you do! We all know that a happy baby makes for happy family.

There you have it, my two cents on sleep training. That’s how we did it. And that being said, it is now 12:59, and I hear Sirenita starting to wake up in the bedroom. I hope this is helpful to someone, because it’s a wonderful thing to have a nap time schedule and not fight to get baby to sleep. We were able to do scheduled naps by 3 months, and have a strong enough routine that we haven't been terribly affected by the "4 month regression." Good luck!

What a week!

I had some technical difficulties last week, and I wasn't able to post! My phone had been running on the pace of dial up internet, so I complained to the Accountant. He, being our technology guru, did some magic which fixed my phone's wifi access, but caused IP conflicts with my computer. I'm known for awkward swipe text errors, so I'm afraid there is no blogging from my phone. We're back up and running now, and will be posting very very soon! Meanwhile, here's a peak at what I've been working on this week.

Sirenita is starting to sit up on her own for short periods of time, so I made use of my time this week to make a cart cover. I'd post the tutorial I used, but honestly... Ugg. We won't go there. I didn't care for it. It was extremely frustrating, so I am plotting to create one of my own. I also get tons of compliments on my carseat cover, so I'll draw that up and get it on here too. I made an "Anywhere chair" found here. It's very easy to make, I can't wait to try it out! I will say that it didn't work on my dinning room chairs, they are too wide and don't have a middle bar. I made an extender strap, so hopefully that will help in such cases. I also added a tiny piece of velcro to mine so I can roll it up neatly and put it in the diaper bag. The Accountant had a pair of batman PJs pants that shrunk, and for years I've been telling him that I will turn them into shorts and make a pair of pjs for the baby we will someday have. Soo... There are the PJs! I made the shirt based off of this tutorial, and the bottoms I just used a pair of PJ pants as a pattern. Long ago I used to make doll clothes all the time, and Pants were super easy so I don't need much pattern for that! As for the dresses... I'm plotting a super cute outfit for Sirenita for Easter. A dress, diaper cover, shoes, a bow.... The works. I bought the fabric, found an example of a dress I want to make, and now I'm practicing to get it just right! These are actually super easy, thanks to this keyhole tutorial (which may not still be there - I'm getting a cox error message trying to add the direct link) and her awesome tutorial for lined bodices. I still haven't found a skirt that I like or decided on the rest of the dress style, but these are so cute and easy to make I may add them to my Etsy store, Sweet Sirenita!

Mom stuff: My experience with sleep training Part 1

Like every mom to be, I dreamed of having a child who peacefully closed their eyes and slipped into an angelic slumber of at least several hours at a time from the first day of their birth. Or better yet, one of those magical babies that sleep through the night the day they come home from the hospital. The first night, even there in the hospital, my daughter woke up every twenty minutes. She would nurse for roughly two minutes, fall asleep while nursing, and be awake and screaming again twenty minutes later. All. Night. Long.

No, my daughter is not one of those magical babies. Honestly, I think babies who sleep through the night are really changelings left by faeries or leprechauns. My daughter has still never slept all the way through the night. We got pretty close once, I think she woke up at 5 am and I was pretty excited. Four months in, I am not sleep deprived. I love to sleep, I get pretty grumpy if I don't get enough, but the fact that Sirenita still has night time feedings isn't a big deal, because there is no fuss to the feedings.

I'm not going to pretend that I have it all together and can give you the magic spell to make your baby sleep (or the phone number for the leprechauns who change babies for sleeping changelings). It has been a journey to get here, but my little Sirenita sleeps like a teenager now. (I'd say "like a baby" but whoever used that to say that someone sleeps well must never have had children.)  I do, however, feel that every parent is intitled to the same help that I scrapped together from dozens of sources.

1)White Noise
Our first week home, my husband and I were up and down all night. Change, feed, soothe, rock, slowly lower, aaaaand.... blast, she's awake. Repeat. The Accountant hadn't been at his job long enough to have paternity leave. I learned pretty quick that at that point there wasn't much he could do when she woke up at night, it was me she needed. Mama the milk machine. So then it was just me, up and down all night.

I spent two horrible, miserable nights in the nursery, walking, singing every song I knew out of desperation, nursing... Me, the boppy, and the baby. She wouldn't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. Shortly before day break, as the birds began to sing, she would fall asleep. Oh, the desperation. I felt depressed even walking down the hall towards the nursery that I had so carefully and lovingly designed. I dreaded bedtime. At night, we would get Sirenita to sleep, and within 10 minutes of our shutting off the lights and crawling into bed she would be screaming like a banshee. We tried everything we knew to get her back to sleep. Nothing worked. Enter hours of sleeplessness. One night, The Accountant was so frustrated he walked into the living room and began to play the piano, while I continued to pace the bedroom with our beet red banshee baby screaming her lungs out.

 We have vaulted ceilings, open concept, and wood floor under the piano. When you play piano in our living room, the entire house fills with music. As soon as he started to play, Sirenita calmed down and went to sleep in my arms.  I remember praying for God to show us what to do, not one of those pious, "Oh, thou mighty God, grant me the ability to..." prayers. It was more like a desperate cry for help. Suddenly, I had a "light bulb" moment. She seemed to be terrified of the dark and silence.

All day long we rattled around making noise like we'd been told. Vacuum around her, so she can sleep through anything, they said. Make noise, so you won't have to tip toe around her. No one told us that babies need noise. When The Accountant finished playing piano, Sirenita was asleep in her bed.
We turned on a small lamp, and played instrumental music all night long. I really hated the instrumental music. I felt like I was sleeping in an elevator with the light and music. But Sirenita went to sleep, and began to sleep for 2 or 3 hours at a time.

I did some research. I found out that the noise a baby experiences in the mother's womb is as loud as a vacuum cleaner. Silence, therefore, is a terrifying thing to them. If you want to sleep well at night, baby needs to know there is still a world out there. We slept with instrumental music on for a few weeks till I saw something that recommended White Noise. I ended up looking up white noise on YouTube. We used Ocean sounds, waterfall, rain, vacuum, fan, blow drier... Use what works for you. I switched it up for a while there, till the Accountant downloaded an 8 hour loop of rain. The first night we used it Sirenita slept for 6 hours straight.

I don't recommend music, though you can use it if you want. We realized that the differences in tones, the fast and slow songs, the few seconds between the songs, etc, caused her to wake up more frequently than constant white noise did. Certain songs seemed to wake her up more than others... So now they make me think of 4 AM. Ugg. We also downloaded a free white noise app that we would use on our cellphones to calm her when we were out. White noise is amazing.

2) The Baby K.I.S.S. principle 
You may have heard of the "K.I.S.S." principle - keep it simple stupid. The baby version is slightly different. K.I.S.S. - Keep It Sleepy Stupid.

Once we moved our bedroom into the elevator, Sirenita began to sleep for two hours, sometimes 3 hours at a shot. The problem now was getting her back to sleep when she woke up. Each time she woke up, I would change her diaper prior to feeding her, then have to spend an hour or two getting her back to sleep. Ugg. No bueno.  I had read to always change the diaper prior to feeding, so that baby is ready to go back down if they fall asleep eating. We had been living in the elevator for several weeks when I got fed up with my reverse naps - being up 2 hours at a shot several times a night. I started looking into how to get Sirenita to sleep better. The recommendations I found were revolutionary to me. Life changing. And made so much sense. Don't wake baby.

Imagine that you are asleep. You wake up at 3am and are hungry. So you get up, turn on all the lights, chat with some people around you, go to the bathroom, listen to some music, take a shower, and finally, have a snack and go back to bed. Are you sleepy? Maybe. Doubtful. You're probably wide awake.

So why do we expect different from our infants? Sirenita cried because she was hungry. I would get up, change her diaper in the full light of the LED lamp we left on for her, talk to her, unswaddle her, feed her, reswaddle her, and hope she went back to sleep. Obviously, it didn't work. I was ruining her sleepiness.  Until I found those revolutionary techniques. Keep it as sleepy as possible.  Here are some "Don'ts" for those late night feedings.

Don't change the diaper unless absolutely necessary.
As terrible as I felt at first, this really helped. I went from four changers at night to maybe two. This may or may not work on a newborn, they tend to poop more often. But by the time Sirenita was 6 weeks old, we were down to one, or sometimes no diaper change at night. That's considering night as 10 or 11pm to 6am. I felt like a monster at first. But then, if I had one of those sleep through the night changeling babies, I sure wouldn't have been waking it to change it's diaper in the middle of the night.

Don't turn on the lights!
I don't like sleeping with a light on. Turns out it was unnecessary for Sirenita, as well. We quickly moved to a night light instead of a full lamp. (That was miraculous!) We can see to change her if need be, to pick her up.. Basically to do whatever we need to, but it's not like sleeping with the light of day.  A night light is more than sufficient. We have a little LED light that can be pointed in whatever direction you want, and it's got a sensor on it so it comes on as it gets dark.

Don't talk to the baby.
Oh, so incredibly mean! Don't talk to that sweet baby at 4am? Monster!
It took me a while to get used to this one. Even though I didn't particularly want to speak at 4am, I was used to "hush," "It's ok," or singing a song. The effect of speaking to a baby at 4am is like holding a conversation at 4am; It wakes you up. Ever slept in the same room with someone who talks in their sleep? They aren't even awake and it wakes you up. Sometimes it scares the snot out of you and takes forever to get back to sleep. Don't talk to the baby if you want them to go back to sleep quickly. Don't sing lullabies at 4am. They don't need it. They don't need their entire nap/bed time routine again, either.

Don't look baby in the eyes.
We called this the "Medusa baby" stage. Don't look her in the eye or she will turn you into stone - or worse yet, not go to sleep! This seemed strange to me, at first, but I understand it better now that Sirenita is older. When you look a drowsy baby in the eye, they get excited to see what you are going to say or do. My daughter absolutely loves eye contact. I know that if Sirenita is laying in bed, going to sleep and I happen to catch her eye, she lights up, smiles, and goodbye drowsiness! We have to start from scratch.

 I remember my sister saying, "but what about the affirmation they need?!" It's ok.
 Baby gets lots of affirmation during the day. That's the time for eye contact. Not at 4am. It felt really mean at first, but within a few days Sirenita learned she didn't have to fully wake up for feedings at night. She cries but generally doesn't open her eyes unless I leave her cry for a long time. So long as I hear her and get her before she reaches a frensied banshee pitch, she doesn't open her eyes during night feedings. Seems she doesn't want to wake in the middle of the night any more than I do. I have noticed during the day sometimes she wants to catch my eye while she's eating before a nap, and as soon as she does she will go to sleep. There's the affirmation she needed.

I read a recommendation that you look at the baby's belly, so you can keep an eye on them without catching the Medusa gaze. Sirenita learned fast, so it wasn't too much of an issue with us.

If you're nursing, here's one more that may help. Learn to feed baby while laying down.
I started doing this because I had an issue with an over supply of milk, which sounds good, unless you've ever had to deal with an angry baby on a nursing strike because they're being drowned in milk! The best position for Sirenita was a side laying position. That helped the whole sleepy feel - especially for me! I don't have to worry about falling asleep in the middle of the night and dropping her. When I feed her on the outside of the bed I wedge pillows up as a barrier so there is no way she could fall out, but I generally wake up if she moves anyhow.  I have found the "vibes" I give off affect my daughter hugely... Especially if I'm nursing her. If I'm in a hurry, she doesn't go to sleep. If I am tense because I'm trying to stay awake, it inhibits her sleepiness. If I lay down beside her, close my eyes and breathe deeply, she will relax and go to sleep.

That is how I get my daughter back to sleep at night. We haven't had problems getting back to sleep since she was 6 weeks old or so. I'll be posting soon about no hassle bed/nap times, and how we get Sirenita to sleep without a fuss at four months old. I will say this now... Although I don't have anything against the "cry it out" strategy, I didn't have to use it. Stay tuned for part 2, and remember, White Noise, and baby KISS!

So many projects, so little time!

We had a huge milestone this week! My little Sirenita rode in the stroller without her car seat for the first time, and loved it! Big deal, right? The weather is beautiful this week and I was planning on taking her on as many walks as possible (72 in January. I love Oklahoma, but the weather is like Calypso, as changing as the sea, so you really have to take advantage of it while you can!). I cloth diaper when we're at home and since she is only four months old, cloth is a little bulky on her. Too bulky for a car seat, so I decided to try putting her directly in the stroller. Low and behold, not only is she fine with sitting in the stroller, but she loved it! A whole new world is now open to her, she gets to see where we're going.
This opens a whole new world to me. She's not quite ready to sit on her own yet, but within a month or two she'll be ready for high chairs, and shopping carts, and swings at the park. So exciting! But so very germy... I'm now working on a cart cover with built in seat belts, and one of those cool "Anywhere chairs" that are a highchair you can roll up and carry with you. On top of that I'm about to convert useless little receiving blankets into light weight sleep sacks, and still whipping up headbands, and bows, and little skirts. Aaaaand, as if that wasn't enough, my brain is swirling with ideas for children's books (I know, right? Baby books? But why not. Maybe I'll be a famous published author.), and things I want to draw and make and sew for my etsy shop, Sweet Sirenita.
I love creating things. More creations means more tutorials and more posts, and more things to share! The funny thing is that I feel most of my creativity has been hidden for so long. I make things all the time, but I don't like to show people. I don't like to expose my creativity, be it written, drawn, etc. So this is a huge step I am taking, trying to make things, sell things, etc. I still feel like my stuff isn't good enough, but maybe I'll get past that. We'll see. But that's one of my "More"s for this year. More creativity, and I need to be less selfish and share my creativity. There should be lots more coming.
The great thing for my blog is while I haven't posted much this week, I've worked on my photography skills and I feel advanced by bounds. So stay tuned; more posts, and prettier pictures coming soon!

Failing in order to Succeed

When I started a blog, I was terrified. I’ve had this idea on my mind for years. It comes and goes, but I hadn’t really had the time until now. I am not sure which terrified me more, the idea of failure, or the idea of success. It’s easy enough for me to write cute little tutorials or stories about learning to be a mom, or how I clean my house. But there’s more to blogging than that, isn’t there.
Many, many years ago I had a blog. This was back in the day, where it wasn’t a business, and there were no pictures. It was raw, unedited, emotion. It was your diary online. Like everything else, it seems that blogs have become sugar coated. It’s easy now to hide behind your foil panel and perfect natural light, and make all your images look so perfect. That’s what draws people’s attention, a pretty picture. It’s easy to hide behind your cute tutorials, and make it look like you’ve got it all together. I was reading yesterday in “Knowing the Heart of God” by John Eldredge how the Pharisees had it all together, they were so “righteous,” but the kingdom of heaven belongs to the humble. Not to those who have it all together. To the meek of heart. It made me think. Honestly, it hit home kind of hard. There’s a song by Casting Crowns about how we all go about our “Stained Glass Masquerade.” We pretend that we’ve got it all together. I don’t have it all together. But I sure don’t want to let that show. If you were to ask me, I’d laugh, giving what I think is a humble show, and tell you I don’t have it all together. I’d walk away feeling pretty proud that you think I did, though. It’d probably inspire me to write about how to clean something, so other people can “get it together.”
I don’t want to be a Pharisee. I want to be the humble in heart. I want to be real. I haven’t got it all together. I’m a mess, just as much as you are. We all are. Isn’t that the point of grace, the point of salvation? Some might have a mental checklist going, “Does a daily devotional, check. Talks about grace and salvation, check.” Don’t compare yourself to me. It’s easy to get carried away like that. You don’t see the behind the scenes. You don’t see that this is the first time in years where I have done that, or that I’ll inevitably find myself playing catchup. That I had to buy a “daily devotional” by one of my favorite authors to help get my lazy butt in gear so I’ll actually be consistent. That I’ve asked God to give me a new concept of spending time with him, because my old one doesn’t work.
I’m not sure why the blog came to mind as I was reading yesterday, almost in the afternoon, being honest. No, I don’t get up at 5 am to do it. There’s another failure, right? Aren’t we supposed to do this “first thing?”
I guess the deal is this. I can write. I know I can write. I know I’m good at it. My spelling and punctuation need a little tlc usually, but my content and ideas can catch people’s attention. I can put out a pretty, fake little surface thing about how I’m learning to be mommy and clean the house. I can sugar coat everything, I can be safe. I can leave my heart out, and have it “all together.” I can be a Pharisee. But that isn’t what I’m supposed to do. I’m afraid of failure, of never being good enough. And generally afraid of people finding that out, and seeing into the real me. But if I’m going to do this, that’s exactly what I have to do. I have to fail in order to succeed. I have to put my heart into it. To be real, and humble. I’m not sure what that looks like, but I guess we will find out.

How not to decorate a Onesie (and a better way to!)

On my post about Why I love a good Pinterest Fail I mentioned a disastrous attempt at painting a Onesie for my daughter. Let me tell you about my epic fail.

Last year I decorated this cute tea towel. It came out wonderfully. I followed a tutorial on Pinterest on how to make acrylics permanent for fabrics, and voila! Cute towel. When I decided to decorate these plain Onesies for Sirenita, I didn't even consider what paint medium to use. I sketched up some cute designs and got my materials together. See, here they are just begging to be used.

I used the pencils to draw my design. I had puff paint there, juuuust in case. I lined the Onesie with wax paper so it wouldn't go through, mixed my paints with the fabric medium, and away I went!

 Hello! There's a reason dinosaurs went extinct! This fellow was an epic fail! Here's my design. He was supposed to be a she, and cute! He became neither. So much for a cute girly onesie.  Time to rethink.  After talking to The Accountant, I hoped online and looked into options. My hand drawn designs are so much cuter than.. uhm... That. 

I decided to try iron on transfers. It was a bit of a bummer. Since I ordered them from Amazon I had to wait several days for them to arrive. Meanwhile, I drew up some new designs. Once they were ready, we scanned them, and because I was using a cream colored drawing pad I asked The Accountant to help me remove the background prior to printing (I didn't exactly want my printer to waste ink on printing a background I didn't want in the first place).

The transfers work great! They're pretty easy to use. Just make sure to flip or "mirror" your image before you use it. I wasted an entire sheet because I figured The Accountant had done it and didn't pay attention when I set them up to print. I was about to iron them on and realized they were going to be backwards. Oops! 

If you aren't sure how to mirror them, you can insert the images in Microsoft Word. Go to the Format tab. On the top right, there should be an option for Rotate. Under rotate choose "flip horizontal." Voila! Now you're ready to print your text reversed so it will be the right way once transferred.

Trim around your image as best as you can.  Be careful not to get too close to the edges, though! My first transfer was slightly messed up because I got too close to the printed image. 

Prior to ironing on you will want to read all the directions carefuly. My transfers say not to use any steam, to press as hard as possible with the iron as hot as possible. Each sized transfer requires a different amount of time.  Make sure you position your transfer how you want it before you iron!

Voila! Aren't they cute? They are a little time consuming because of the hand drawing, scanning, background removing process but I love how these came out! They look super cute on Sirenita. 

If you would like one for your own little one, you can purchase them on my etsy store: Sweet Sirenita

Mom Stuff: The boogie vacuum

At 12 weeks, the Sirenita got her first cold. She woke up one morning her usual sunny, bubbly self and smiled at me, all the while breathing like an ogre through her poor stuffy little button nose. I got out the trusty "Snot Sucker;" the blue bulb that they gave us at the hospital. I have another that we were given at one of my three baby showers that is still in the packaging.  I distinctly remembered the nurse telling me, "These are so much better than the ones from the store, they're much more heavy duty."
Trusting to the nurse, who should know, I got out the blue sucker and commenced operation De-Ogre-fy.  Squeeze. Suck. Squeeze. Suck. Squeeze. Suck. Are you kiddding me?! Nothing. I got nothing out with the "much more heavy duty" snot sucker bulb. I found it absolutely useless.
Frustrated, I turned to the internet. I looked up ways to de-congest a baby younger than 3 months. I would love to give some blog credit, but everywhere I looked said the same thing a friend told me before Sirenita was born. Nose Frida.
On a blustery winter day we stopped at walmart. I went in and bought a Nose Frida, some baby saline, and extra filters. Wow. Let me tell you about some Ghost Busters going on in here. Sirenita has had two colds now. The second one was much worse than the first, but we have a far happier baby, because The Accountant and I have been playing Ghost Busters.
Let me explain a few things about Nose Frida. First of all, it's a team project. There is no "I suck the snot out of baby's nose." Nose Frida shows a cute little cartoon picture of a mom sucking the snot from her smiling baby's face. Your baby will not smile when  you suck the snot out of their head. Baby will scream like you are trying to suck their brain out through their nose. Be prepared.
Sirenita hates the Nose Frida. We try to use the element of surprise. One of gets ready to suck the snot out, and the other holds the vacuum end for the sneak attack. It takes both of us to coordinate the attack while she screams, but Nose Frida works! It's disgusting. I won't show you a picture. Just think Ghost Busters and Slimer.
We have sucked adult sized nastiness out of that tiny little button nose. As soon as we quit and Nose Frida is out of sight, Sirenita calms right down and lays happily breathing through her nose and playing. Ogre breathing is gone. And no, Nose Frida will not cause permanent mental scaring of your child. My daughter doesn't scream when she sees it. She screams when we suck stuff out of her nose. It's normal, babies generally hate having their noses messed with, be it to wipe with a kleenex, or suck ghosts out.
This thing is amazing. I wish someone would use it on me when I'm sick. If you have a kid, you have to get a Nose Frida.

Why I love a good Pinterest failure

Anyone who has been on Pinterest or any social media has by this time seen the posts of Pinterest fails. Demon Easter Bunny rolls, screaming kids sitting in sludgy pumpkins. So many fails. I've even seen a blog post about the evils of Pinterest. They say it makes readers think that the blogger lives a perfect life in a perfect house. It squashes peoples dreams when they plan the perfect wedding or nursery on Pinterest before their is a fiance or a baby in the near future. It makes people think that  they are failures when their muffin tin cookie cups slide off into the oven and set the smoke detector off, and their demon bunny bread makes all the children at the table terrified.

As much as I wish I was, and strive to be, I am not perfect. Perfection is as illusive as the disappearing Roanoke colonists and just as intriguing. One of my favorite Bible verses is Jude 24, now unto him to is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault. Ahhh, take that pressure off! Oh, I wish I was perfect, alright. But this is about failure. Failure is important in our lives. Here are four reasons why I love a Pinterest failure.

1)New creations
Failure has been around a whole lot longer than Pinterest. I admit, I sometimes look over pictures of perfectly sculptured cakes, and peoples neatly photo shopped items and wish I could do it. But who would create new recipes if we didn't fail sometimes? Most of us have heard the story of the accidental creation of Toll House Chocolate chip cookies. St. Louis is famous for Gooey Butter Cake, which was also a "failure." The creator inverted the amount of butter and one of the other ingredients. These recipes may not have come out as expected, but what a sad world it would be without chocolate chip cookies!

2)Funny stories
One year when The Accountant and I were newly weds, I decided I wanted to make him sugar cookies for Valentines. The Accountant really loves sugar cookies. I was working two jobs at this point, teaching English in a high school, as well as working part time at the accounting firm The Accountant worked at. My routine at that time was to make up a week's worth of baked goods and freeze the dough on Monday, making it easy for me to pull out whatever I needed and cook it during the week.  One day a few weeks before Valentines day I made up sugar cookie dough and put it in the freezer.

A week or so before Valentines days I made Quiche. I really ought to make it more often, it's so good. I make mine with Poblano peppers, corn, and cheese. Yum... So good. I was really looking forward to my delicious Quiche. I remember sitting down to dinner, taking that first bite, and... something was wrong with my quiche. Very wrong. The Accountant couldn't detect anything odd. I found it disgusting; for some unknown reason it was sweet. I used regular pie dough, it shouldn't have been sweet. It was too sweet for me to eat. The Accountant ate both my portion and his. After dinner, as I thought back over cooking the quiche I realized what I had done. I had pulled a ziploc bag with a ball of  what I thought to be pie dough out of the freezer. None of the bags of dough in the freezer were labeled.  I made my Poblano pepper quiche with a sugar cookie base, instead of pie crust. Dinner and dessert in one, So gross! After Valentines I confessed my error to The Accountant. We had a really good laugh about it, and still do. He insists it was delicious. I refuse to ever make Sugar Cookie Quiche again.

This year we were invited to a picnic for labor day. I wasn't sure what I wanted to take, we had limited time to cook before hand so I thought I'd go with something easy. I found a recipe for adorable lettuce wedge salads on a stick on Pinterest. What's cuter for a picnic than food on a stick? They were super cute and super easy! Theoretically. You know how when you cut up a head of lettuce it doesn't hold together anymore? Yeah... I don't even know how the blogger took a picture of theirs, mine ended up being a few pieces of lettuce on a stick. I'm guessing the whole thing was photo shopped. I didn't have time to make anything else, so I showed up to the Labor Day picnic with a bag full of iceberg lettuce, a bag of tomatoes, a container of bacon, ranch dressing, and a whole bunch of pointy sticks. Hello Pinterest fail! Did my life end over a bag of lettuce and pointy sticks? No, but we sure got a good laugh out of it!

3)Trail and error
I recently decided to paint designs on some Onsies for Sirenita. Last year I found a tutorial (on Pinterest) on making tea-towels using fabric medium. I figured it would work on the Onsie since my towel is adorable. Apparently painting a towel and painting a Onsie are incredibly different.  I was trying to paint a dinosaur, but it was so bad I painted "Dinosaurs: Epic Fail" on it, and stuck it in the "Just in case bag" that we carry in the trunk of the car. Unless there is a poop-splosion while we're out and don't have the diaper bag, it'll never get worn.. Haha, can you imagine donating that once Sirenita has outgrown that size? I mean, it's a perfectly good Onsie. Just that my painting is an epic fail. I had a bunch more plain onsies, and a bunch of cute ideas, so we tried something else that worked beautifully. I figured out one way that definitely did not work, but I also found a way that I never would have considered if I hadn't tried and epicly failed first.

 4)Finding new skills
 I am creative, so I browse Pinterest looking for ideas. I also browse various stores and get ideas from them. I love to make things, most of my home decor is DIY. I draw The Accountant into the creation process too. We try all kinds of crazy new things. Inspired by what I see on Pinterest, I look up tutorials or figure out how to make things myself. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes they come out amazing.

 We've done the foil over glue decor thing. Mine looked like a little kid did it. The one on Pinterest looked like an antique made of real metal. I tried the Sharpie mug decorations. Mine wiped right off. I tried a mug painting tutorial, even baked and cured my mug just like they said. Not only did the paint wash off, but it stuck to some of my other dishes and has never come off of them. Go figure. I tried creating decor using a chalkboard. Who knew I am so good at lettering and designs? They come out so nicely that I hate to wash my chalkboard.

Once I found a cute tree shaped shelf that I thought would be adorable in our nursery. When I found out I was pregnant with Sirenita, I asked The Accountant if he could make one. He watched tutorials and studied online quite a bit, and churned out an amazing masterpiece that is so much cuter than we expected. He didn't know he could do carpentry like that, but he gave it a try.

Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." I may never make lettuce wedge salads on a stick again, but I had fun. Be inspired to try new things. Don't live your life vicariously, drooling over Pinterest while trying to avoid failure. It may offer you a million different ways to fail you never would have come up with on own, but you may just find something new you never knew you could do!